The government’s flagship programme Aadhaar is a 12-digit unique identification card that serves as proof of identity and address for Indian citizens. Over the past months, the adoption of technology and its usage by citizens has been growing.
In November, 287 million e-know your customer (e-KYC) transactions were carried out using Aadhaar, a 22% growth over the previous month. By the end of the same month, the cumulative number of e-KYC transactions had reached 13.5 billion. A press release explained that the Aadhaar e-KYC service is playing an increasingly crucial role in banking and non-banking financial services. It provides transparent and enhanced customer experiences.
An e-KYC transaction is executed, only after the explicit consent of the Aadhaar holder, and eliminates physical paperwork, and in-person verification requirements for KYC. Telecom operators and fintech firms, among others, have seen ease in the onboarding of new customers through eKYC. In November, 1.95 billion Aadhaar authentication transactions were carried out, 11% more than in October. Most of these monthly transactions were carried out by using fingerprint biometric authentication, followed by demographic and OTP authentication.
So far, cumulatively 86.21 billion Aadhaar authentication transactions have been executed by the end of November this year. This is indicative of how Aadhaar is increasingly playing a role in good governance and aiding welfare delivery to residents, the release claimed.
The Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS) has been a driver for financial inclusion. Cumulatively, 15.91 billion last-mile banking transactions were been made possible through the use of AEPS and the network of micro-ATMs by the end of November. More than 1,100 government schemes, programmes, and in the country run by both centre and states have been notified to use Aadhaar.
Aadhaar is a digital infrastructure for e-governance and a catalyst for ease of living and ease of doing business. It has been supporting the vision of the Digital India initiative, the government has said. Launched in 2015, the Digital India initiative is a flagship programme, which aims to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. The digital ID is helping various ministries and departments in the centre and states by improving efficiency and transparency in the delivery of welfare services to the targeted beneficiaries.
In September, 252.5 million KYC transactions were executed via Aadhaar, almost a 7.7% jump compared to August. Aadhaar saturation is now near universal among the adult population of India. Among all age groups, Aadhaar saturation was 93.92% by end of September. During the same month, citizens updated more than 16.2 million Aadhaar cards as against 14.6 million such updates in August.
As of the end of September, a little above 666.3 million Aadhaar numbers have been successfully updated following requests from the residents. These upgradation requests are related to demographic as well as biometric updates and are done at both physical Aadhaar centres and by using the online Aadhaar platform. In August, nearly 2.2 billion authentication transactions were carried out via Aadhaar, a growth of more than 44% compared to July 2022.
